Rand Paul: A Neocon in Libertarian Clothing?

In 2010, Rand Paul courted the neocon wing of the Republican Party. His “pilgrimage” to the heart of darkness should have set-off alarm bells in both the Tea Party and libertarian movements, but it was more or less glossed over.

In October of 2010, Jason Zengerle noted the following in a long article about Rand Paul:

At a private office in Dupont Circle, he talked foreign policy with Bill Kristol, Dan Senor, and Tom Donnelly, three prominent neocons who’d been part of an effort to defeat him during the primary. “He struck me as genuinely interested in trying to understand why people like us were so apoplectic,” Senor says of their two-hour encounter. “He wanted to get educated about our problem with him. He wasn’t confrontational, and he wasn’t disagreeable. He didn’t seem cemented in his views. He was really in absorption mode.”

Rand was in “absorption mode,” in other words he was sucking up the neocon ideology of confrontation with the enemies of Israel, its advocacy of mass murder, and the seemingly endless piling up of war crimes and other crimes against humanity.

Prior to this, in 2009, the Rand Paul campaign issued a press release spelling out his neocon take on Gitmo and killing suspected terrorists without trial:

“Foreign terrorists do not deserve the protections of our Constitution,” said Dr. Paul. “These thugs should stand before military tribunals and be kept off American soil. I will always fight to keep Kentucky safe and that starts with cracking down on our enemies.”

Dr. Paul believes in strong national defense and thinks military spending should be our country’s top budget priority. He has also called for a Constitutional declaration of war with Afghanistan.

Early on, Rand Paul was drinking the neocon kool-aid.

Paul’s support of Romney translates into support for more neocon wars, more mass murder, and more tyranny at home.

“If we take the candidate at his word, a Romney presidency would move toward war against Iran; closely align Washington with the Israeli right; leave troops in Afghanistan at least until 2014 and refuse to negotiate with the Taliban; reset the Obama administration’s ‘reset’ with Russia; and pursue a Reagan-like military buildup at home. The Washington Monthly dubbed Romney’s foreign policy vision the ‘more enemies, fewer friends’ doctrine, which is chillingly reminiscent of the world Obama inherited from Bush,” writes Ari Berman.

Romney’s foreign policy advisers are predominately neocon. On May 31, I wrote that “over seventy percent of the neocons who staged the illegal Iraq war have signed up as Mitt’s foreign policy advisors. It is the same old pro-Israel rogue’s gallery, including Elliott Cohen, Robert Kagan (who is behind Romney’s ‘American exceptionalism’ stance), Eric Edelman (one of Bush’s main neocons at the Pentagon), and Dan Senor.”

“Many of these advisors belonged to the PNAC, an influential neoconservative advocacy group founded in the ‘90’s. It has morphed into the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) launched by Kagan, Edelman and Senor. They advocate for regime change in Iran and a more confrontational stance with Russia. They are opposed to cuts in military spending,” writes Nancy Lindsay.

Patrick J. Buchanan has predicted Romney’s secretary of state will either be the irascible neocon John Bolton or the Israel-centric warmonger Joe Lieberman.

“On Tuesday at Manhattan’s B’nai Jeshurun Synagogue during a debate with J Street founder and President Jeremy Ben-Ami, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol predicted that the next U.S. Secretary of State in a Romney administration would be Senator Joe Lieberman,” Maidhc Ó Cathail wrote on May 19.

How is it possible Rand Paul would consent to crawling into bed with this gang of war criminals? Is it possible he was a neocon all along a rode the coattails of his father’s reputation in order to get elected to the Senate?

If so, the people of Kentucky need to send him packing during the next election cycle.